Parmalat founder faces court

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Shielded by a cordon of policemen, Parmalat's former chairman
Calisto Tanzi appeared briefly in a packed courtroom on
Wednesday.

Angry investors, who had lost their savings, crowded outside for
the opening of a trial into the huge fraud at the dairy empire.

Tanzi, Parmalat's co-founder, sat quietly through an hour of the
hearing as lawyers representing some of the tens of thousands of
investors who lost savings requested that their clients to be
listed as civil plaintiffs in the case.

Also on trial are the Italian branch of Deloitte & Touche
and the former Italian branch of Grant Thornton, both of which did
auditing work for Parmalat.

After about three hours taken up by procedural matters, the
trial was adjourned until December 2 to allow court officials time
to study requests by the investors' lawyers.

Outside the courtroom, dozens of investors who lost money when
Parmalat crashed almost two years ago voiced their anger and their
hopes of recovering some money through the courts.

Tanzi looked calm as photographers, TV crews and spectators
strained to see him sitting in the front row of the courtroom
behind a line of police.

He made no statements, but consulted frequently with his three
lawyers and exchanged brief remarks with the prosecutors working on
the case - including Francesco Greco, who questioned Tanzi when he
was jailed shortly after Parmalat's crash.

The trial will examine the web of financial trickery that
prosecutors allege Parmalat used to cover up its financial losses
and raise cash, tactics that the investigators say began shortly
after the company went public in 1989.

That web was exposed in December 2003 when Parmalat acknowledged
that a $US5 billion ($A6.57 billion)) account that its Cayman
Islands-based subsidiary Bonlat claimed to hold with Bank of
America did not exist.

Shortly afterward Parmalat filed for bankruptcy protection and
revealed that its net debt was more than $US18 billion ($A23.65
billion) - eight times higher than it had previously claimed.

Tanzi, 66, founded Parmalat after taking over his father's
salami business as a 22-year-old college dropout.

The company expanded rapidly, growing into a global giant with
36,000 employees in 30 countries, and Tanzi was considered a model
example of Italian business success.

Parmalat was a pioneer in developing long-life milk and the
international product line expanded to Santal juices, Kyr yogurt,
Archway cookies, and Pomi tomato products.

Prosecutors allege Tanzi also played a key role in coordinating
the fraud that allowed Parmalat to cover up its losses and
eventually brought the company down. He faces a maximum sentence of
five years if convicted.